Ann Shaw -
"I am a writer/artist based in Scotland. After working as a Feature Writer on the Glasgow Herald I went to Glasgow School of Art as a mature student.
Check out my web-site: annshaw.co.uk "
Contact- annshaw

Friday, March 04, 2016

Monday, February 15, 2016

View from my writing desk - why staring at the mountains might be good for me.

As an artist/writer I have noticed that periods of boredom are
often a prelude to a creative spell.

I have often suspected this and have learnt not to be afraid
of it.

Now its official.

When we are bored we are forced to think outside the box, do
something different.

Some research at the University of Virginian published in
the Journal of Science in 2014 found that students left alone in a room for 15
minutes gave themselves mild shock on the ankle to alleviate boredom.

Another study (reported in todays Guardian) found that
students who had been given a boring task, copy numbers from a telephone
directory, and then were asked to come up with creative ideas on different ways
to use a pair of polystyrene cups, were more inventive than those who didn’t do
the boring task.

Dr Sandi Mann, one of the authors, said we should embrace
boredom “ to enhance our creativity.”

Maybe that’s why so many creative folk say they get their
best ideas when walking….

Friday, October 16, 2015

Our local paper, the Stirling Observer, carried this photo I took ( or rather a member of staff at the Macrobert took it for me on my iPhone).
After getting no coverage in this paper of my solo exhibition in Dunblane museum last month I was beginning to think it would be impossible to get any arts coverage, something I know most artists are forever comaplaining about.
So, what's the secret? to be honest I don't know. What I do know that in this age of massive cutbacks in newsrooms throughout the land

you have to send stories and photos in to the paper literally "ready to go". They have neither the staff nor time to do re-writes.

Thursday, October 08, 2015

Political correctness gone mad! I’ve been asked by the
Macrobert arts centre in Stirling to remove a hashtag because it might reflect
badly on them. It refers to a cartoon drawn by a member of my mud workshop of
Cameron and a pig.

Are they devoid of a sense of humour? Whatever happened to
artistic freedom of expression?

What’s more this workshop forms part of Luminate Scotland’s
festival for Creative Ageing- not that you would know that in the Macrobert arts
centre.

I asked if they might give our workshop, which was highly successful,
some publicity- and was told to do it myself!

Having this solo exhibition has been a steep leanring curve - you ge to see first hand what the public lke or dont like about your work. I am in the gallery part of the time and if I manage to engage peoplei n conversation then its great, especially when you discover that so many are visitors, often from abroad, seeking out their roots.
In the grand scale of things ( three month world tour) its understanable tht they are not going to spend much time with my exhibition therefore I was really chuffed to find in the Visitors Book a comment from an Australian visitor who had enjoyged the diversity of my work- it rnges from mud paintings to mobile art ( created on my iPhone).

How do you judge a success of an exhibition? by media coverage? -apart from a single column in local freesheet, nothing. By works sold? - two. Or by interaction with the public? - in which case good.
My installation and inter-active text/box :"Getting Older....what does it mean to you?" has resulted in a flurry of contributions which I will turn into a text piece, maybe a small booklet.

This ties in with an article I read in the latest Tate magazine that says museums/galleries in the future will be multi-purpose spaces where all kinds of events would take place.
They would no longer be places where you walked in to stare at objects.

Monday, August 24, 2015

Busy getting ready for my solo exhibition in Dunblane museum next week. Decided to use this image for the poster. Thankfully so much can be done online these days. How on earth did we manage without the internet.

but it has got the
least hits on YouTube. Not sure what that tells you about (a) public taste) or
(b) artistic merit.

More importantly
though it reminded me of the time I worked with Cuban performance artist TaniaBruguera now an internationally acclaimed artist and political activist.

We were in the same
class at the School of the Art Institute Chicago and she was in the throes of
developing Burden of Guilt, an epic performance piece and she needed recordings
of sheep. Well, I come from Wales and would be going home for Christmas so I
did some recordings of sheep on the family farm. These were later used in her
performance though after they had been manipulated in the sound studio I hardly
recognized them!

There was one
surreal morning in the School of the Art Institute when the building was filled
with the sound of hundreds of sheep being moved from one field to another.It brought folk scurrying out of their
offices to find the source of the commotion.

These memories came flooding
back yesterday after reading David’s book.

* I took this photo of a photograph in Ernest Hemingway's house in Havana.